AWO Safety Initiatives Are Steadily Advancing

Michael Breslin is the director of safety and sustainability at The American Waterways Operators (AWO). Before joining AWO in 2021, he spent nearly 13 years at Turn Services, a New Orleans-based barge towing and fleeting company, where he began as a deckhand and progressed through various roles in logistics, safety, compliance and operations. Breslin also served in the Louisiana Army National Guard for eight years, participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and Hurricane Katrina response operations.

During his tenure at Turn Services, he earned a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of New Orleans, obtained a Merchant Mariner Credential and was actively involved in the New Orleans Mariners Club and the International Propeller Club. He received the Inland Marine Expo’s 40 under 40 award and earned multiple accreditations in marine and industrial safety.

Breslin is a passionate advocate for mariner safety and sustainable initiatives in the marine industry. He resides in New Orleans with his wife and son, cherishing moments with family and friends when he’s not working.

Waterways Journal: Michael, can you update us on the progress of the near-miss reporting initiative you wrote about for WJ more than a year ago? How much data has been gathered? What have you learned? Have you made any changes to the kinds of data you collect? Have you changed any reporting protocols? What actionable intelligence has resulted? How have companies applied it?

Michael Breslin: Last year, I highlighted the importance of working with the towing industry to create a voluntary near miss standard that defines the criteria companies should use when reporting close calls and incidents where stop work was called prior to an incident occurring. Creating this uniform data collection set would allow operators to trend and compare leading indicators, rather than lagging, to promote safe practices on their vessels.

I’m happy to say that we have made real progress in achieving this goal. AWO has begun collecting and publishing High Value Near Misses and sharing them through our online resources library. These High Value Near Misses are free of all individual identifying information and include lessons learned and suggested next steps for companies that may have a similar near miss or incident. AWO has also been working with the Maritime Administration to develop and promote the SafeMTS program, which has taken the lead on this important initiative for the inland towing and barge industry. The SafeMTS is a voluntary and confidential program aimed at collecting, analyzing and benchmarking near miss data from the maritime industry to advance safety and environmental stewardship. Kevin Kohlmann, director of safety at the Maritime Administration and lead for the SafeMTS, presented at AWO’s Interregional and Coastal Safety Committees Summer Meeting on the pilot program and planned next steps.

The pilot data presented at the Summer Meeting included 15,696 entries from seven companies over a timeframe covering January 1, 2016, to January 29, 2023. These entries included anywhere from six to 36 data fields per instance, with each company defining the fields using varying titles and definitions.

SafeMTS is working now to finalize the 17 data inputs, or boxes to fill in. Their work will be tested next year, when they hope to add 10 more companies to the program. During that expanded roll out, SafeMTS will be asking questions like, “How many boxes are being filled in? Are any being left intentionally blank?” The answers and expanded participation will lead to the final product, a dashboard that shows comparisons and trending information for participants. AWO is supporting the development of the final product, and we hope to host a version of the dashboard on the AWO website as well.

The administrative time required to verify, standardize and compare all of that information is a huge commitment, which is one of the main reasons that standardization of inputs is the focus of the SafeMTS program now. There is an enormous amount of work behind the scenes that has to happen to create an online form and manage its data.

Beyond the administrative commitment for participating companies, the greatest concern I’ve heard is a well-founded concern over data security. This is addressed by SafeMTS through their partnership with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), which protects the data entered into the system under a protocol developed under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA), a law that requires BTS to protect respondents against identification by indirect means and prohibits the release of data to courts, government inquiry and even from FOIA [Freedom Of Information Act] requests.

AWO will continue to partner with SafeMTS to promote this opportunity and to educate the industry about the importance of supporting a standard voluntary near miss reporting program for the towing and barge industry.

I’d encourage anyone interested to reach out to Kevin Kohlmann at kevin.kohlmann@dot.gov, or to AWO by emailing safety@americanwaterways.com.

WJ: What news do you have about AWO’s other safety-related initiatives?

Breslin: I’m happy to report that we are headed in the right direction in our efforts to seek continuous improvement in safety! During a recent meeting of the Coast Guard-AWO Safety Partnership’s National Quality Steering Committee, the Coast Guard Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis shared in the partnership’s annual safety report that the 2022 crewmember fatality rate per 100,000 full-time employees engaged in the towing industry is the second lowest ever recorded by the partnership, which goes back to 1995.

The report also illustrated downward trends in spill volume, recording the second lowest reported rate of gallons of oil spilled from tank barges in 2022, and the second lowest count of reportable incidents since 2018. However, there is still room to improve. With the help of industry safety professionals through the AWO Safety Leadership Advisory Panel, AWO is pushing resources through the AWO website, including training and educational tools that can be used to bolster any towing company’s safety management system.

In addition to pushing for constant improvements in safety and environmental stewardship, it is also important to recognize the professional mariners that work hard to keep America’s marine highways safe and secure each day. The masters, mates, tankermen, maintenance and support personnel who drive our economy are committed to safe operations, but too often, it is only the negative events that receive attention.

To bring attention to the many positive, professional and even heroic efforts of these men and women, AWO launched the American Waterways HERO Award in March of this year. Since that time, more than 100 mariners have been recognized for their involvement in 34 events that entailed selfless, life-saving acts performed on the waterways. The critical role that commercial mariners play in helping keep our waterways safe is not something that is well-known. This award has provided an opportunity for our industry to recognize that heroism and share the story of our industry with the public.

Winners receive the recognition they deserve and a valuable prize from our sponsor for the program, insurer 360 Coverage Pros, which issues a year of complimentary one-year Marine License & Professional Liability Insurance policy to each mariner recipient of the HERO Award.

I am also focused on AWO’s data collection, seeking ways to increase the value of AWO’s Safety Statistics Reporting Program. A recent update that will take effect in 2024 will employ the Coast Guard’s severity index for injuries, allowing our members to compare the severity rates of their operation to the rates of the industry as a whole. This is important, as we need to rank incidents in terms of severity, not just time lost. You can lose time for a couple of stitches, or due to a much more serious injury, and these injuries shouldn’t be treated or ranked the same. We want apples-to-apples comparisons wherever possible.

WJ:  AWO is also focused on environmental sustainability. What’s been happening on that front?

Breslin: I am working with AWO members through the framework of our Sustainability Task Force Implementation Plan to further improve the towing industry’s environmental performance. AWO is building educational opportunities into our meetings and creating materials and forums for members to learn from one another.

Recently, at the Summer Safety Meeting, we featured educational sessions highlighting lessons learned from members using biodiesel and other alternative fuels. We have also produced webinars and presentations at industry events on the benefits and challenges of electric vessels and other green propulsion technology, and we are engaging with our partners to provide information to interested AWO members about new and existing funding opportunities and other resources to support the adoption of sustainable technologies.

Another way we are working to reduce emissions is to advocate for waterways and associated infrastructure improvements that increase the marine transportation system’s efficiency, capacity and resiliency. Moving cargo by water is the most environmentally friendly option, and increasing the utility of our waterways will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions by addressing issues that drive waterways congestion.

As we pursue these efforts, we are also telling the positive sustainability story of our industry, particularly through the AWO video titled The Tugboat, Towboat and Barge Industry: A Sustainability Leader Today, and Tomorrow, which was released last July. The video details the many advantages of moving cargo by water and has more than 675,000 views on social media to date.